Obsessive Quotes

• When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.

  J. K. Rowling

  Love, Life, Underestimate

  62 Copy quote

• I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

  Barbra Streisand

  Art, Thinking, Names

  19 Copy quote

• I've always had that obsessive will to win and a commitment to excellence.

  Sumner Redstone

  Commitment, Winning, Excellence

  19 Copy quote

• If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven.

  Ben Elton

  Love, Memorable, People

  14 Copy quote

• Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

  Anne Lamott

  Running, Fun, Writing

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.28, Anchor

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I try not to be sentimental and obsessive about possessions. I love collecting, but I hate owning.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Hate, Trying, Sentimental

  "Karl Lagerfeld, Global Aphorist" by Bruce Sterling, www.wired.com. July 17, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing haunts us like the things we don't say.

  Mitch Albom

  Fearless, Unspoken Words, Haunting

  Twitter post from Aug 05, 2013

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries-the realists of a larger reality.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Real, Thinking, Hard Times

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2018). “Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.441, Hachette UK

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.

  Karl Bowman

  Love, Delusion, Love Is

  "The Subtlety of Emotions". Book by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev (p. 445), 2001.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty.

  George Leonard

  Essence, Boredom, Novelty

  George Leonard (1992). “Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment”, p.69, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In our obsessive wish to arrive, we often forget the most important thing, which is the journey.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Inspiration, Journey

  4 Copy quote

• I am not obsessive about anything except my health.

  Linda Gray

  "Linda Gray on the return of Dallas and her best friend Larry Hagman". www.mirror.co.uk. October 12, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some of my music requires an obsessive-compulsive approach and a real embodiment of excessiveness. So I really have to live in that world of overstimulation. Sometimes I think it's like a drug; more is more, and you can never get enough. The older I get, the more I crave that excessive aesthetic. It's never going to satisfy me.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Real, Thinking, Drug

  Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. January 31, 2011.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In recent poems, I have abandoned the theme of not being able to write for an even more obsessive subject, the nature of language, particularly English, in the formation of my imagination and being.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Writing, Imagination, Able

  Source: www.oxfordjournals.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Hate, Character, Race

  5 Copy quote

• In Among the White Moon Faces, I wrote about my desire to be a writer as rooted in my obsessive hours of reading English novels and poetry. It was that spur, that desire, that pushed me to set aside love and marriage in my early twenties.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Reading, Moon, White

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I gave up writing, I'd have to find an equally obsessive way to fill my time. Yarn-bombing skyscrapers or making houses out of empty soda bottles.

  Eden Robinson

  Writing, Yarn, House

  "The Saturday Rumpus Interview With Eden Robinson". Interview With Helga Schimkat, therumpus.net. September 24, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Psychopaths don't have that charming skill set. They definitely manipulate, but they do it through focused, unskilled means. They're more obsessive.

  Patrick Heusinger

  Mean, Skills, Charming

  "'Jack Reacher' Villain Patrick Heusinger on Playing Opposite Tom Cruise". Interview with Harper's Bazaar, www.harpersbazaar.com. October 24, 2016.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.

  Ian Bogost

  Wife, Kitchen, Desire

  Source: app.longform.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Welcome to the psychiatric hotline: if you are obsessive compulsive press one repeatedly. If you are schizophrenic listen closely and a little voice will tell you which number to press. If you have borderline personality disorder hang up; you have already pushed everybody's buttons.

  Barbara Oakley

  Voice, Numbers, Personality

  8 Copy quote

• The obsessive documentation is itself adjacent to hyper-consumption in our society. The desire to just have everything all the time and adjacent to that is - it might be a little hokey but - a certain loss of identity that then only gets sort of found or ascribed to these moments that are documented.

  Ted Leo

  Loss, Desire, Identity

  Source: www.avclub.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one, evidently, except me has found "No Alarms" poem ironical that an obsessive theme in my writing was - and has continued to be - not being able to write.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Writing, Alarms, Able

  Source: www.oxfordjournals.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think Paris Hilton is really our generation's Marilyn Monroe. She's the image of the youth today. There's a real fascination with Paris, ranging on the obsessive. I'm repulsed by her, but because of her notoriety, she has access to an audience.

  Matt Tong

  Real, Thinking, Our Generation

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If only I had discipline, but alas, it is only an obsessive-compulsive trait and the beauty of habit that causes me to return again and again to my work.

  Louise Erdrich

  Discipline, Obsessive Compulsive, Return

  "Louise Erdrich’s War Of The Roses". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 9, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not as obsessive-compulsive about certain things; I give a lot of latitude to people and support people. I know that I can't do it myself and that you're only as good as the people you have behind you.

  Donna Karan

  Giving, People, Support

  "Donna Karan on Meditation, Fashion - and Love". Interview with Mayu Saini, wwd.com. March 28, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source